In early May 1871, a French socialist named Eugene Pottier contemplated the smoking ruins of the Paris Commune and, in hiding from government troops, composed a dirge, its six verses promising that the workers of the world, who had been nothing, would one day be all:

Arise, you wretched of the earth,
Arise, you convicts of hunger
Reason thunders from its crater
It is the eruption of the end
Let us erase the past,
Crowds, slaves, arise, arise
the world will utterly change
We have been nothing, let us be everything

In 1888, a textile worker named Pierre De Geyter (or Degeyter) set Pottier’s song to music, using a harmonium as his vehicle. The song, called “L’Internationale,” was immediately popular in French factories, and from there it set out on its long, history-altering journey around the world.

Karl Marx, it has been said, was right about everything except communism. That point is eminently debatable, but inarguably the cause that bears his name made potent use of “The Internationale.” The Marxists were not alone, though; socialists, anarchists, and trade unionists made the song their own, too, and kept its spirit purer than would the totalitarian regimes that hijacked it along the way.

To hear “The Internationale” in some 40 languages, from Albanian to Zulu, see this page, kept by Russian scientist and photographer Vadim Makarov. And for a sense of how the 137-year-old song reverberates around the world today—sometimes with new lyrics, as provided in English by folk singer Billy Bragg—see Peter Miller’s excellent documentary The Internationale (2000).